


a relaxing flight through the asteroid belt

by CheapNightmares



Series: Life Beyond War [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I'm so bad at tags?, M/M, Qymaen is a terrible driver I'm sorry it's just facts, Qymaen is so mad, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, charley 'death wish' harris, first STAR WARS fic yeehaw, he's so MAD, oc charley by me on rotttnapple, original General Grievous / Qymaen jai Sheelal interpretation by stealsaber on tumblr, teen & up rating for some mild swearing / low key possible death mention, the amount of S A S S, the regret is real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 02:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapNightmares/pseuds/CheapNightmares
Summary: General Grievous' plan to stay and fight the pirates is soundly interrupted by the stupid human who's now living on his ship. At least he gets a story out of it in the end.





	a relaxing flight through the asteroid belt

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon-divergent, Grievous survives the duel with Obi-wan Kenobi and ends up on the remote planet of Jakku. This fic takes place sometime after those events.

_Impact on. Starboard side. Shields. Holding._  
“Shut up lady.” Charley mutters under his breath as they duck and weave through the asteroid field, skirting rocks the size of moons and zipping over smaller bits of debris. Some of it rock, some of it long-lost ships of others that had been bold enough to enter and never came out again. Several pirates are hot on their tail, their crafts small and far more maneuverable than General Grievous' gigantic, clunky -  
“_YOU __**FOOL**__. YOU ARE GOING TO KILL US ALL._” The abrupt, booming bark and rough cough that follows startles Charley bad enough that he nearly jerks the ship into one of those looming craters. He's plucked out of the seat, his harness undone by Grievous' additional hands as he steers with another. _Cheater_, Charley thinks, already sulking as he's plunked down and refastened. The cyborg hunches over the controls, four arms becoming two, slender mechanical fingers wrapping around the yolk as Grievous seems to squint at the oncoming masses of deadly rock. The wrong hit could cripple an engine, or worse. Charley crosses his own arms over his chest, an absolute epitome of childish pouting.  
“I can fly this ship better.” Grievous growls. There's a faint, crunching crash almost immediately after.  
_Impact on. Port side. Shields. Holding. At. Ninety. Seven. Percent._  
Charley rolls his eyes, scoffing as he crosses his arms over his chest.  
“_I can fly this ship better._” He mimics the cyborg, voice all but dripping with sarcasm. Grievous coughs again, wheezing faintly, ignoring him. He's irritated, Charley can tell. In their brief time together he has learned a good deal about the cyborg's body language, the way the slim and tapered plates framing his face twitch tells more than the man would ever admit. Grievous likes to pretend his doesn't have any feelings.  
Another low crunch, and the ship shudders. The calm robotic voice sounds again, announcing another impact and the ship's shields down another two percent. Grievous snarls and grumbles to himself. Charley thinks to tell him that he's too angry, ships don't like being flown angry, then decides it's better not to lest the cyborg crashed them right into one of the rocks out of sheer spite.  
At least Grievous had headed the warning about firing proton beams at the pirate's vessels. Sometimes it was better to flee then haphazardly blast away, causing a chain reaction through the field that would inevitably crush everything caught within.  
A duality of faint booms and the ship shudders again. The obnoxiously calm system voice returned, this time with shields down ten percent. Charley glanced at screen off to the side, the pirates were gaining on them, no doubt ducking and dodging through the asteroids with practiced and slippery ease. This wasn't their first rodeo and Grievous' ship was one hell of a prize, if they could catch it and survive what laid within. 

Lucky for General Grievous, this wasn't Charley's first escape through the rocks either.

Charley unfastens his harness, hopping up in the midst another crash-and-shudder (along with four percent of the shield's abilities) and into Grievous' lap. The cyborg wheezes, sputtering, hands leaving the controls long enough for Charley to grab them again. He wraps his human legs around the slender metal ones, pulling the ship into a stomach-rolling drop to duck under a shifting asteroid then up again in a roller-coaster of hell.  
  
“You _idiot_-”  
“_Shhhh._” Charley plants a hand on the cyborg's face, steering with the other like a lunatic as he pulls one of Grievous' arms around his waist like a makeshift belt, “don't distract the driver.”  
“How did you even-” Grievous starts again before Charley cuts him off a second time, both hands back on the yolk again.  
“Shh! Hold me.” He pulls the craft into a hard turn, flipping them sideways through two monstrous moons drifting together in a cosmic kiss. Charley smacks the secondary thrusters at the last possible moment, jettisoning them through with barely a breath to spare. Had he been paying attention he would have heard the faint squeal of Grievous' metal feet biting into the floor, the tightening of his arms around his midsection. Instead he spares a glance at the screen showing their pursuers and cackles with fiendish delight. Two pirates tried and failed, another three still in the races.  
“Once we're out of this field, we can lose them with the with the hyperdrive. Those ships aren't fitted for it, they're pure manual, no course plotting. Makes them respond faster when-” Charley breaks off with a faint squeak, the abrupt clench of Grievous' arms around his chest cutting off his air as he throws the ship into another sharp turn. It wasn't built for maneuvers like this. An alarm blares, the sound nearly deafening until Charley smacks at the console to shut it off as he rights the ship again. The rocks here are smaller, they're nearing the edge of the belt. Time flies when you're having fun.  
“When you're piloting in tight spaces like this.” Charley finishes, now that he can breathe again. “Don't have to fight the computer.” He glances again at the screen showing their pursuers, making a considering sound in his throat as he forces the vessel to duck and weave. A few of the smaller rocks pinged off the hull, he couldn't avoid all of them.  
“It is _your_ fault we are in this mess to begin with.” Grievous wheezes behind him, turning his head away as he tries to stifle a cough. “If we had stayed and fought-”  
“We would have been boarded, and then I would've been locked in a closet, and then the whole ship would've smelled like blood and death and pirate pee for ages.” Charley overrides the man, pushing the ship a little faster as the asteroids grow smaller and smaller, less dangerous things to duck. Soon they would simply peter out into pebbles and dust.  
“_Are you doubting my fighting capabilities?!_” Grievous' anger was a constant, lurking animal and now it was wholly awake, red-eyed and vicious. Count Dooku's voice echoed faintly in the back of the General's mind: _there is room yet for improvement.  
_“No, I'm saying pirates smell and your doc said you need to relax more. Now quit _squeezing_ me, I'm not a fruit you can juice.” Charley swats at the cyborg's arm and Grievous relents, grumbling and stifling another irritated cough as the human sent the ship into hyperdriver, the computer automatically calculating the route. All they could do now was sit back and wait. 

General Grievous had been at the helm, patiently plotting a course around the rock belt to the next port when the pirate ships had come slinking out the shadow of a nearby moon. It had seemed that no sooner than the warning had left the voice box of one of his droids that Charley was skirting around him and_ leap-frogging_ over the back of the pilot's chair that the droid had evacuated to make way for it's master when the enemy ships were spotted, not far off the starboard quarter. Grievous was stalking across the deck to remove him when Charley launched them into the thick of the rocks, not over or around or even under, but _in_.  
The droids had scattered to safer parts of the ship in the face of their master's anger, hot as burning star. Let the human face it, if Grievous took his lightsabers to him, perhaps things would be more normal again. Ever since General has brought the mutt aboard, things had changed. The dim shadows being slowly, assuredly driven back, replaced by soft, warm, gold light (it was gentle on the eyes, Charley explained to the nervous droid coaxed into helping him). The delicate perfume of alien flowers that seemed to linger, long after the human had gone on his way.  
The sudden appearance of tiny seedlings in General Grievous' quarters. Their pots held in place with magnets, a fine silver netting draped over their soil so it wouldn't spill – even, as Charley explained to the cyborg, if the ship turned upside down.  
Twinkling laughter. Discussions that went beyond the General's occasional low, growled orders.  
Life was sneaking in, infecting everything like a virus.  
But still their cyborg master did not kill the human. The droids didn't understand, but they knew better than to question it.   
  


“I do not understand. How you can be so _stupid_, so _foolish_ and _reckless_ and yet-” A coughing fit overtakes Grievous, his lungs aching, his posture hunched. Pained and irritable. Charley watched him from his seat, legs tucked up and fingers curled around his ankles. He considers telling him to go lay down, rest for a while instead of stalking around like an angry Tooka; but given the cyborg's current mood, he guessed it would go over as well as trying to give said Tooka a bath.  
“And yet how can I pilot your enormous ship through an asteroid belt without killing us all?” Charley speaks up, unable to help his amused little grin. “How can I pilot at all when I could hardly keep my junk heap little freighter in one piece? Have a seat and I'll tell you.”  
“No! I have no intention of listening to more of your babble.”  
“Oh come on Grievous! We got another hour of hyperspace, you got time for a little story before you go and take a nap.” Charley's grin turns into a cheerful smile, he leans over and pats the seat next to him, inviting. “You can't do anything until we get to the next port anyways.”  
The cyborg stares at him, eyes narrowed. Irritated. Annoyed. Maybe still a little pissed about it all. He coughs one more time before grumbling a little, “_fine,_” stalking over to the empty seat and sitting in it. Hunched over like a massive bird at it's perch.  
“Excellent! _So._” Charley scoots around in his own chair, turning so he's better facing the cyborg; Grievous squints at him, regretting this before the human had even began.  
“When I was a wee lad...about, oh.” Charley hums faintly, considering, “twelve or so, my father took my older brother and left me and my mother. To where, no one knows, but I still hold out the hope that he's rotting in a garbage heap somewhere on some...”  
“Get on with it.” Grievous' flat, annoyed interruption.  
“Getting on with it. My father left, and it was just me and my mom. We did okay, half the mouths to feed but half the income and she...there were things she couldn't have, that I knew she wanted. She was a herbalist and there's this pot that she had been dreaming about for as long as I could remember. Made from a type of crystal that emitted a specific resonance for this very rare species of a medicinal flowering herb, she had those seeds since before my brother was even born and could never plant them.” Charley's sitting entirely sideways in his chair now, legs tucked up, hands describing as much as his voice as Grievous watches, listens in hulking silence.  
“Little things, too...curtains, a new basin, a warmer quilt. So I went out, after my lessons, and started..._finding_ things to sell.”  
“Stealing.”Grievous interjects again, but he sounds a little less aggravated than before.  
“Finding.” Charley argues, playful and light. “I was able to get my mother those little things. A warmer quilt, curtains, a basin that didn't leak. Better food on the table. I was careful, of course, it wouldn't help her if I was scooped up by the authorities. After about a year I started to get a little cocky. Bigger targets. Taking on jobs, too, those paid better. Then one day, I'm sneaking into this pod-race shop, going to steal some weird gizmo someone else wanted, thinking it'll be a quick in and out when I'm snatched up by the scruff by this old Duros. Ram Sorloks, his name was.” Charley smiles, shakes his head at the memory. A fond one, clearly, despite the circumstances.  
“Mean old brute. One eye. Big scar that gave him this perpetual sneer. He asked me just what the hell I thought I was doing. And I told him. I'm here to steal his stupid little doo-dad so I can buy my momma that crystal pot for her birthday. He looked at me for what felt like forever. Just about the time I started thinking I could poke him in his good eye to get him to let me go, he asks how much I was going to get for it. I told him, and he offered me twice as much if I'd race for him. Three times as much if I won.”  
“This is not a little story.” Grievous speaks up, but to Charley his tone sounds almost gentle. He gives the General a crooked little grin.  
“It's a medium story, then. Almost done. Promise.”  
Grievous sighs and lifts one hand, making a slight _go on_ gesture before lowering it.  
“I took his offer, because it seemed better than my job of _finding_ things, and less likely to break my mom's heart if she ever found out about it. Ram showed me how to make those pod-racers go, and the next day I won that race. Kept winning them, and bought her that crystal pot she wanted. She didn't find out what I was doing until I crashed and got a metal rod in place of my left humerus. God she was _mad_...but she didn't stop me. Ram kept me racing, never showed me how to fix anything, but he taught me a lot about flying things. Even took me to the ports to check out the big ships. How those controls worked.  
I was twenty when I bought my little freighter, I wanted to see more of the galaxy, what it had to offer. My mother told me to go without her, something about finally leaving the nest...and so I went, off into the places that nobody else really cares about, avoiding raiders and pirates, studying plants, collecting seeds. Getting into trouble, talking my way out of it. I came back after about...four years. Found out everyone I knew was dead, killed when some war that happened leveled most of the city.” Charley shrugs, a slight hitch of the shoulders. “I took my little battered freighter and left again. Eventually I ended up on Jakku and met you. My favorite part cyborg-part bird.”

“Hmpf.” Grievous grunts. His golden eyes are half lidded, he looks tired, but more relaxed. “Ram Sorloks should have taught you better. You are still an idiot.”  
“Maybe, but I didn't run into nearly as many things as you did.” Charley gives him a cheeky smile as Grievous stares back. The cyborg sighs, lifting himself out of his seat and making his slow stalk off the bridge.  
“I am going to my quarters. Try not to steer us into any more asteroid belts.”  
“See you later, alligator.”  
“I-” Grievous stops, shakes his head, and continues on. There was no sense in trying to understand the bizarre sayings the human seemed full of. Another hour of hyperspace. Perhaps he would be able to enjoy an uninterrupted nap before they reached the next port.

**Author's Note:**

> May the Sass be with you.


End file.
